Church IT Strategy | Life as I see it | Technology | My Family | Music
Ok I was reading this article on Fox Business and it just made me mad. Where do they get this data? Here is the article:
I would love for one of the people that gather the data to ride to work with me one day and see how many cars are still on the road. In fact in my opinion the traffic has gotten worse in the last few months. Anyway that is all I have to say about this. You can take the article for what it is worth but I don’t buy it!
So this morning as I sit less than 20 miles from the US Capital Building, the House of Representatives is about to vote on the Financial Bailout plan. While many think this is a good thing, I think that if this bill passes it is going to signify the beginning of the REAL financial crisis of the US economy. Why do I think this? Well because now the US Government is going to help all of the companies and individuals that started this whole crisis by setting a precedence that if you make a bad decision the US Government will be here to save you.
Lets take for instance the house that I live in now. It was built in 2005 which was the height of the real estate market boom here in the DC area. The couple that had the house built paid $745,000 for it and my guess is had one of the crazy mortgage loans that offered 110% financing, interest only payments, zero down payment and an interest rate of around 4%. If this was the case the couple financed $819,500 and had a mortgage payment of around $2,731/month. The couple closed on the house in March 2006. Now fast forward one year to March 2007. Their loan adjusts back to a 30-year fixed loan at a rate of 5.5%. Their payment jumps to $4,650/month. Panic sets in and foreclosure looms for this couple. It is about this time the real estate bubble is bursting because this same situation is happening for millions of other people around the country who were roped into these ridiculous loans.
Now it is September 2008 and here we sit. Banks or going under, the stock market is tanking and all of this because the banks and creditors decided it was OK to give consumers loans that they really could not afford. I am not blaming banks 100% for this. Why a consumer did not read the fine print of these loans or did not have enough common sense to see that in 12 months their loan payments were going to almost double is beyond me. It is however apparent to me that banks were making fortunes off of peoples stupidity. Now the Government wants to help all of the individuals involved which really ticks me off.
My personal opinion is that the Government needs to just let this whole situation correct itself. While I am mad that all of these big bank CEO’s and Executives are walking away with millions and millions of dollars I have little sympathy for all of the consumers that were sucked into the credit market. If the bailout plan passes, the economy is going to take longer to recover because when the Government intervenes, it always takes away from the natural supply and demand of the economy.
OK my rant is over. Now I have no choice but to leave things in God’s hands. It is great to have an opinion but God is untimately in control and knows exactly what is going to happen. I do pray for all of us during this crazy time.
Well today marks a new era in the Haines household. Marcus went to school for the first time! He started his Tuesday/Thursday preschool near our house. He was very excited especially about his new shoes that he picked out. We took a few pictures so enjoy!
Ok folks I have done it. I signed up for a lawn service! If you know me well our townhouse in Fairfax had the best lawn in the neighborhood. It was sort of my test bed for my skills at growning a law. Granted it was only about 15×20 it looked amazing! When we moved into our new house, our lawn was basically dead. We suffered through the beginning of this year with great anticipation of turning our yard around this fall. Last week Scotts came and areated and overseeded our yard. Now the waiting game beings! The worst part of all of this is watering the whole yard with my one sprinkler…it is only for a few weeks so we will suffer through it! We will keep everyone posted as to the progress of our new yard!
As I stated in my last post, we went camping on Loft Mountain this past weekend. It was a great time to get away and prepare ourselves for the craziness we are going to experience this fall! Our friends Cheyenne and Daniel came with us and it was great to hang out with them. We ate lots of great camp food and played games well into the night. The weather was fantastic and the views were absolutely beautiful. On Saturday night we drove to one of the overlooks on Skyline Drive where we sat and watched the entire sunset. It was really hard to come down out of the mountains back to reality but we feel very refreshed after a great weekend away. Here is a link to a few pictures from our trip.
You might have wondered where I have been lately. Almost 2 weeks with no blog post!!
As you can see from the map I went on a very long road trip totalling 2313 miles! It was quite an adventure and lots of family drama was present during the entire trip. It was really good to see Michelle’s family though. As I write this Michelle and I are getting ready for another trip of our own without kids! We are headed camping on Skyline Drive this weekend with some friends of ours. It should be a really fun and relaxing time. Michelle and I decided that we needed a couple of days rest before the crazy events of the fall start in September. If I can get cell phone reception while we are camping we will post some highlights of our adventures. I am hoping the weather is nice so I can get some really good pictures!
So my parents and my sister gave me a SlingBox for my birthday. Last night it came in and I was able to get it hooked up to our TV in our family room. I must say that I am quite impressed with it so far! It was very easy to setup and it is amazing I can control my whole home theatre from my laptop and watch TV on my laptop in near HD quality. I also was able to setup everything to be accessible when I am not at home. I tried things out at work today and was able to get a pretty decent picture on my computer at work. It doea appear however that I need to make a few more adjustments to my firewall at home in order for everything to work the way it was designed. I also am very excited that I can finally use my Verizon FIOS connection to its full potential!
You might be wondering why I needed a SlingBox. Well the main reason was I am trying to figure out how I can use one or multiple of these at church to watch our services either in the building or possible externally. I haven’t completely engineered all of this out in my head yet but I think there could be some great uses for these. Also since the devices are relatively cheap makes it even more worthwhile to figure out what I can do with one over the network at church.
So stay tuned to for further updates on my brainstorming ideas for uses for a SlingBox!
For more information on SlingBox please go to http://slingbox.com.
…I am at a loss at what to say! This has been a very stressful week so far! Yesterday I managed to stay in meetings ALL DAY long! I was so excited to finally have my inbox cleaned out and then yesterday happened! Now I have 142 items that need attention. I know Michelle hates my Blackberry but I often wonder how life happened without it! Anyway this week can only get better right?
PS - stay tuned for my review of my new Slingbox. For those of you who do not know what a Slingbox is, it is basically a device that hooks to your TV at home and allows you to watch it through the Internet! I know of several people who love them so I can’t wait to try mine out! It should be here later this week so check back for the details!
Well at approximately 2:25pm today the power to the church went out today! While in the past this was normally a bad thing a few weeks ago we had our server room power hooked into the building emergency power generator. The good news is the automated cutover worked just as planned! It took about 10 seconds of battery power and then we were off to the races on the generator. It is actually pretty funny because I am one of the few people right now who is actually still working! Everyone else is in the dark while I am at home still connected to the VPN working away! Thanks to our Building Services team for getting us hooked to the generator.
So today I finally got my wire project almost finsihed! I hooked up all of the DirecTV connections and cleaned up the wire a little. The only things I have left to do now are move the satellite dish to the roof, hook up my over-the-air distribution and then do final labeling. I think the satellite dish move is going to have to wait until we get some cooler temperatures. It is way to blasted hot to go up on the roof now!! I know everyone thinks I am such a nerd for having all of this wiring in my house but hey, this is my life!! Check out the pics on google. Here is the link:
